Re: CO2 and other Contributions by Planes, Auto, and Cows ??
on 03/07/2013 12:46:13 MST

Cows, or to be more specific, agriculture in all its manifestations is the biggest contributor to green house gas emissions. This stat includes losses through deforestation, release of methane and CO2, and destruction of soil that would otherwise capture CO2.

"Can you give us some idea of what you want the answer to be, so that we can provide the appropriate data?"

That was exactly the question asked back in 2002!! "Mr. President, can you give us some idea of what you want the answer to be, in regards to Iraq's WMD, so that we can provide the appropriate data for Mr. Powell's presentation to the UN?"...

Ag is about 25% you'll see, though of course I'm sure you can find more fine grained analysis that might take into account forest cover lost etc. Transport 15%, electricity 25%. Translated, that means OUR daily lives and consumption patterns are the primary cause, overwhelmingly. And yes, moving production of the stuff we buy out of sight to China still counts. I thought transport would be higher, closer to 25%, but I guess globally it isn't.

Here's the google search: "co2 emissions by industry" (stupid bpl forum software won't take the actual search link) so you can click around yourself and see what you find, but honestly, when I see a question like this posted, I have to scratch my head, it's not hard to type in a question to google, just phrase it in clear english and hit enter.

Methane release from ocean floor and permafrost defrosting may tilt this a bit in the coming years, I believe that's the main question now, how much and how quickly methane will get released, some of this data is 2005 vintage, and they have more data now, so you might look around more. I'm not sure how those charts are for methane, but I believe CO2 is the primary agent at this point, until we hit certain tipping points at least.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/http://realclimate.org/

will have decent current analysis and breakdowns of various issues. There's other decent sources, but those two aren't bad because they are run by real people who actually do the work, not flakes and scoundrels.

Google works reasonably well for such questions, most of the information is public and easy to locate. You can drill down into the questions by refining your searches by adding more key words, like methane etc.

[added]ah, this is better, that's closer to what I thought, from the EPA: Greenhouse Gas Emissions. That shows the usa, which is closer to what I thought, 40% electricity, 31% transport. That's because we consume and drive more than anyone else in the world, and live in the biggest houses that are the least efficient, the usa could easily cut its output by 50% with almost no real loss in quality of life or whatever we like to call our over-consumption patterns. I suspect ag is mixed in there with transport and industry.

Emissions from cement production (377 million metric tons of carbon in 2007) have more than doubled since the mid 1970s and now represent 4.5% of global CO2 releases from fossil-fuel burning and cement production. global trends cdiac.ornl.gov

Who would have thunk, cement, 5% of total fossil fuels/cement, I guess a lot of co2 gets released when they bake the lime or whatever it is they do. One could do this all day, but why bother, nobody is going to actually change their behavior anyway...

There's so much data out there really it's actually harder to avoid it than find it, as long as you look that is, of course.

Happy trails, time to sew that stealth grayish backpack I've been thinking about.

Re: CO2 and other Contributions by Planes, Auto, and Cows ??
on 03/10/2013 15:54:36 MDT

I must say your question could start another carbon flame war, which might be kinda fun. Most charts only show emissions by industry as CO2 equivalent tonnes, which hides how insidious methane in particular is as a warming gas. When you take into account the greater impact of one tonne of methane compared to straight CO2, agriculture is, IMHO, still the biggest contributor that humans have control over.